I have to admit, when I saw Alpine Meadows start their “4th of July Fan Quest” I had low expectations. Not that people don’t like Alpine, I’m quite certain they do, and the concept was built upon a system that Targhee used with great success where more fans mean all fans win, not just a lucky guy or gal who’s name is drawn out of hat, but the design of it all looked very…amateur.

Here’s the thing. The Alpine Meadows profile pic is a highly technical bit of Photoshop artistry that looks pretty darn awesome. Slapped on the bottom was a good effort, but ultimately lacking icon for the Fan Quest challenge. Their progress tracker was much of the same, clearly done in house. You can see the images below for the icon I am referring to. Finally, the reward was small. For every 1,000 fans, Alpine would shave a measly $3 off the price of July 4th lift tickets.

So, here I was on my wannabe designer soapbox laughing at the promotion that I thought was sure to fail. Dear Alpine Meadows Facebook crew, thanks for proving me wrong. Well done, guys. Here are a few final stats:

• Duration of the Challenge: 43 days
• Starting Fan Count: 7,705
• Ending Fan Count: 9,564
• Total Fan Increase: 1,859
• Percentage Increase: 24.1%

Now, I don’t know if they used paid Facebook ads or other methods to drive up fan counts, but as far as I can tell the growth was pretty much organic. Here’s the progression as updated by Facebook Wall photos:

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.